Big Glass Houses

*Forewarning: This is an angry rant brought on by too many interactions with willfully ignorant people.

The number of people I know who have truly made it on their own, no handouts or hand ups from family or the government, can be counted on one hand. 

Over the past few weeks the members of Fox News Patriotic Shit Throwing Club have been emboldened by club leaders (the President and all who follow him) to come out and throw stones. 

The people I see throwing the most stones over those who receive SNAP and medicaid in my small hometown should really pull the blinds closed on their big glass houses. 

Living in the same town my entire life, I’ve seen and heard a lot. I know some people who are going to stay engaged for the rest of their lives (relationships) so they can continue qualifying for certain benefits. I know quite a few whose parents are still paying the bulk of their bills. Whose parents paid the downpayment for their homes or just flat out “gifted” the whole house. People who work for their family or own their own business yet claim minimum wage on their taxes, while getting cash under the table, all so they can get, you guessed it: government benefits.

These people drive new cars and live in big homes and only wear the best brand names so you wouldn’t think of them when words like food stamps and welfare come up but they should. 

See, and maybe I should have made it clear from the beginning:

 I don’t judge anyone who screws the system in order to survive. 

Our government has been corrupt for a long time (probably the entire time) and the fact that billionaires exist should be a crime against humanity, as there is no such thing as a billionaire who made all that money ethically. Not one. They are all guilty of screwing the system, more so than anyone who magically fits through the hoops one is required to squeeze through for the most minimal benefits imaginable. 

But those who manipulate the system and yet still manage to judge those who just haven’t figured out how to manipulate it in all the same ways they have, are the reason we continue to find ourselves in worse and worse conditions. 

In the area that I live in, a family of four has to make less than $40K a year in order to qualify for preschool for their children. Unless the child has a dire need (speech, disability, etc). Yet the parking lot is full of people who spend hours a day on Facebook arguing and complaining about people having food stamps and how they know they aren’t working. 

How do they know it? 

They know it because they are working and doing what it takes to qualify for the minimal benefits (such as preschool and medicaid) that they are receiving and they don’t qualify for SNAP. They are often told they make too much money, yet they still need some assistance to get by.

(Also add, to their incorrect assumptions and ignorant arguments, illegal immigrants, whom they wrongly assume are getting SNAP (food stamps).) 

The reality is that the majority of Americans can’t get by following the rules of capitalism and the current tax system. They have to break the rules, they have to find loopholes. 

The ones following the rules in this country? The very few who are working hard, and honestly filing every penny they earn on their taxes? 

They are struggling more than ever and are, understandably so, pissed off.

Many, though, are just pissed off at the wrong the people.  

I know that the moral of the biblical David Versus Goliath story is lost on the majority of red hats, who insist on going after the vulnerable and the needy. They prefer punching down because punching up is too exhausting. 

Look, I understand how hard punching up is, I’m 5’3. I also understand that in a world where we’re all just fighting to survive anything that requires more effort sounds a lot like hell. 

But I know that my soul can’t handle the depravity being a bully requires. My conscience is evidently too sensitive to guilt. I guess that makes me woke and a wuss.

A few of the techno heads of silicon valley and godfathers of AI suggest that empathy is a weakness. I disagree. Not that they give a shit. I believe that empathy is hard but it is the only thing through which anything truly ever gets better.

Without it the world is lost, a hellscape not worth saving, and if we are all supposed to scrape out our empathy in order to survive then I say let it all burn.